A while ago, I crossed 1,000 campaigns with Teespring. I only started advertising with FaceBook when Teespring started to work for me so ‘Campaigns’ highlighted above pretty much sums up how many TS campaigns I’ve launched, (give or take 50 to be conservative).

Since I’ve been doing this for so long and have generated over 250k revenue from Teespring alone, I’ve learned a lot about the whole ‘custom product’ industry that’s making a footprint in affiliate marketing for a while now. Below are some learning’s from all this.

Teespring/AM is a game of numbers

Many newbies start off launching 1 campaign and will focus on JUST that. Although this may seem like a good strategy when you’re starting off, once you get faster start to launch 3-5 TS Campaigns at a time and see what data you get back. The more products you have out there, the faster you’ll learn about which niches are hot and what demographics convert better than others. Basically, you’re knowledge progression will be much quicker.

Once something shows signs of profitability, THEN you start to focus on it and cut out the losers.

What Data Should you be Looking At

Comments: What are people saying about your design? Do they like it, dislike it? Are they suggesting something else? Are you getting messages asking for a variation of your shirt? Are other people hating on it because they support another view, (might be another good niche!).

CTR: I’ve gone through this countless times. After doing this for a while you start seeing a pattern between CTR & sales. There’s a lot the CTR can tell you. The audience might give you a big CTR because they’re passionate but won’t buy because they’ve been sold 10s of shirts. This tells you the audience is either not a buyer demographic or have been sold to numerous times before. Usually it’s the latter.

Cost vs Revenue, (Sales)

An obvious one. Once I start seeing my ROI is above 100% I’ll start to increase the budget. A lot of newbies will continue to spend hoping somehow sales will pick up. If you’ve spent $25 or so on your shirt and no sales, just cut it and make another design.

Target by MOST Passionate First

I don’t think many people do this. When targeting interests on FB, I always add about 15-20,000 of the MOST passionate people I can find on FB for that particular niche. There’s no point adding 700k-1Mil audience when you’re test budget will only reach about 10,000 of them. Do the bare minimum to test. The easier you make the process, the less frustrated you’ll get.

For example, if I’ve made a shirt for the horse niche, I’ll add a couple of horse magazines and state-wide associations. That should be enough. Once I see I’m profiting, then I add a bunch of more highly targeted interests. Once even this starts to saturate, (frequency increases above 1.5), I’ll add all more horse related interests, ones that aren’t THAT targeted but might have an audience that will buy.

At the start though, just target enough of an audience so your $10-$25 test ad spend will get to the most targeted audience you can possibly find. If these guys don’t buy, no one will.

Pockets of Gold are Everywhere

If you go through my monthly reports, you’ll notice there are a few times I’ll hit red, then I’ll hit a long streak of green again because I’ve found a design(s) that works. This happens all the time. There are pockets of $$ EVERYWHERE, you just have to persevere enough to find them. The only way I’ve been able to do this is by focusing mainly on launching more campaigns at as many niches/sub-niches I can find.

Money in Small Niches

There is money in sub-niches. For example, a shirt directed at a particular rugby team is more likely to give you a positive ROI then one made for rugby fans in general. Why? Because chances are no ones made a shirt JUST for them yet. Think of how many sub-niches there are, literally 100s of thousands.

Another example is making a shirt for Siamese cats instead of cats in general. You get the idea? The more you can appeal to the person/demographic that will see your shirt, the better chance you have of selling it.

Money in New Design Concepts

Sure, you might be able to make money in broad niches like rugby. But your design has to be fresh/new and REALLY good. If you take the Nurse niche for example. These guys have been sold to SO many times, they’re become blind to TS ads on their FB Newsfeed. You have to come up with something amazing to get them to pull out their credit card again and make a purchase. You can make money in this for sure, just don’t do the same thing that everyone else is doing.

Keeping an eye on What’s Working

I used to just brain storm a bunch of ideas and then throw them out there hoping they’ll work. Most of the time, they flopped hard. My success rate started to increase dramatically when I started keeping an eye out on winning shirt/hoodies, thinking of what parts of this shirt I could vary.

Make The Process Fast For Yourself

Make things simple for yourself.

– Get somewhat good at paintshop/gimpshop so you can do simple design tasks yourself.

– Have design templates so you can pump out 5 designs in 20-30 minutes.

– Don’t make a FB fanpage for every single shirt.

You get the idea…

Only Niche Page Out When Things Are Working

When I first started I used to make a FaceBook Fanpage every time I launched a shirt. It took me ages to launch a few shirts because of all the things I had to do. Now, I just have a bunch of generic fanpages that I post all my campaigns too. Once any of them start to do well, only then will I make a dedicated fanpage for it.

Connect yourself to Communities

You want to keep updated on the latest updates Teepspring makes to their platform so you can get in before anyone else. For example, just recently, TS released kids apparel. If you get in early I’m sure you’ll be able to stumble upon opportunities others haven’t seen yet. Some good communities are Teespring University, Teespring Mastermind and Aff Playbook Paid Forums. Aff Playbook have shared a lot of tips and tricks that have been directly responsible for pretty much ALL my TS income, (not exaggerating).

Below is a snapshot of some posts from the Aff Playbook Forum

Ending Remarks

I’ll be flooding this site with more Teespring related content so stay connected by subscribing or check up on it 3-4 times a week.

All the best.

Want to get Serious with Internet Marketing? Join us on Aff Playbook Below!

17 Comments

Hey Mateen!
Again awesome summary on your technique and progress.
I’m impressed that you did 1000 so far – I have to catch up! 🙂

From what I’m learning from you and on the forum and other sources I’m making more decisive moves and avoiding mistakes that you and others paid for – so thanks again for helping me with my success so far in this venture – I’m seeing good progress and results.

What did you mean by “a shirt directed at a particular rugby team is more likely to give you a positive ROI then one made for rugby fans in general”? Did you mean shirts that include the actual rugby team name on the shirt or the rugby team being the targeted interest on facebook. Please elaborate on what you meant. Thanks.

I was trying to illustrate the point that shirts that are targeted to ‘sub-niches’ have a better chance of success than those targeted at a general niche. I should have used a better example.

Think making a shirt for German Shepherd owners instead of Dog owners or people that like Bass Fishing instead of just fishing. The more you can appeal to someones interest, the more chance you will have to sell something to them. That’s Internet Marketing in general.

I’ve been using Page Post Engagement with great results but I’ve been testing with Website Clicks as well.

I’ve tried the cost per conversion but it never seems to work. I’ve noticed my conversion pixel on Facebook doesn’t log every sale that comes in so I resort to using Variable Keys in the URL itself (not the facebook URL tags as I’ve found those aren’t accurate either.)

I’ve experimented with a few main ones and there is a difference of opinion in the Teespring community. I personally do Page Post Engagement like you.

No you’re doing it right. There is a pretty big discrepancy between FB pixel conversions and actual TS sales. Some may be due to people making multiple orders thus only firing the pixel once but purchasing many. Sometimes it just doesn’t capture the conversion properly.

Well, they’re against DODGY affiliates that promote crappy CPA offers. You should have no problem selling physical products from good merchants, Teespring & Fabrily included. I’ve spent around 150k on FB this year, all to Teespring/Fabrily Campaigns. As long as you’re not breaking any rules, (cloaking, profanity, scraping etc), you shouldn’t have a problem.

You say only test on the most passionate first. I imagine your mean fb audience interest. If so, what indicators are you looking for that distinguishes “most passionate target audience”.

What happens if you mistake what you think is the most passionate target audience for non buyers & mistakenly give up on the entire niche when actual real buyers can be found in other interest inside that same niche.

And how long do you run your test $10-25 campaigns? Four hours? 14?….24?….more?

So when targeting with FB isstead of just typing in ‘reptiles’ for reptile enthusiasts that keep them as pets, type in ‘reptile magazine’, reptile shops, associations, etc. you can google these or use audience insights to find them.

If your targeting this way you won’t target wrong.

I run $25 total, the quicker the better so usually a full day. I set the budget at $30-$50 and wait till its spent around $25, then I reanalyse.

Yep, daily budget of $5 is enough. These days I spend around $5-$10 and if I don’t get link clicks under 50 cents by then I end the campaign. Fabrily is definitely the better choice due to the webpage localisation based on the visitors geo.